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Torvalds Unveils New Linux Control System
BlakeCaldwell writes "CNet reports: 'Linux founder and leader Linus Torvalds has launched a new tool, called Git, to manage his software project, after a dispute led him to drop the previous system.' He will start using Git instead of BitKeeper to control the flow of updates and track changes in the kernel." We've covered this previously. Relatedly, ChocLinux writes "Jeremy Allison, who wrote Samba with Andrew 'Tridge' Tridgell, is sticking up for his friend in the row over BitKeeper. "
What an awful zdnet article, "But now it seems that some open source developers haven't kept up their end of the bargain. " Tridge wasn't bound the by the license. "Tridgell's decision to reverse-engineering Bitkeeper. The resulting clone would violate BitMover's intellectual property -- something McVoy wasn't going to sit back and watch happen." Again, no, it wouldn't. My understanding is that reverse engineering for interoperability is legally fine. Think of Samba..
Reverse engineering BitKeeper for fun and profit
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
I guess this is the logical place to note the newest Groklaw story, Tridge Speaks where Tridge tells his side of the story, or at least a brief overview from his perspective.
The monotone hackers have the same design as this new git tool. They already adapted their visualisation tools to make pretty screenshots of the kernel patches development history: http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/monotone-devel/2 005-04/msg00183.html
Yes, that's right; from the git README:
Pirate Party UK
Indeed - Linus has already explained the reasoning behind this name.
chris
If you follow the Linux Kernel mailing list at all, it has been fairly apparent for the past week at least that Linus would be using "git" to manage the kernel. He has been putting a lot of time into it. So, my guess is, yes - the editors had "inside" knowledge
http://lists.seyza.com/pipermail/gnu-arch-dev/2005 -April/001097.html
It sure is, I believe it's derived from the Scottish term get, usually used to refer to an illegitimate child. 'Git' itself is used more broadly though, in much the same way as 'bastard' is.
From Groklaw
Groklaw's stevem heard Tridge's speech today at the LCA 2005 conference, Australia's national Linux conference, and he has a report for us:
This was taken from my memory of Dr. Andrew Tridgell's keynote at this years LCA2005 Conference.
Essentially Tridge did *NOT* do anything that anyone could ever possibly ever take as breaking a BitKeeper licence, as far as I can see. How was it done? He, like any good sysadmin would, first off telnetted to the BitKeeper port on a BitKeeper server.
$ telnet thunk.org 5000
WhooHoo! Connection! So, next obvious step that we *all* do is type in the obvious:
help
Back came a list of commands to manipulate the BitKeeper server and ask things of it. Well, according to Tridge, a bit of reading of the LKML (Linux Kernel Email List) shows that the "clone" command is the way to checkout someones source code repository.
So Tridge's massive "reverse engineering" project came down to a single line of shell script:
$ echo clone | nc thunk.org 5000 > e2fsprogs.dat
Hey presto, Tridge has just checked out from a BitKeeper repository into the file e2fsprogs.dat.
The audience was laughing and cheering Tridge on as he explained just what a Mountain had been made of this Molehill. And I mean made by both sides of the issue -- those who he said he was some Uber Reverse Engineering Wizard and those who claimed that he MUST have used a BK client.
Funny report, isn't it? Anyway, now you know Tridge's side of the story.
There's two major flaws in the ZDNet article, really - outside of the fact that they unfortunately buy into McVoy's lies and FUD, they get two things outright wrong.
1) BitKeeper's "free" license does not say that you can't use BK to work on a competing product - it says that you cannot work on a competing product AT ALL, no matter whether you use BK for it or not.
2) It's not true that Tridge hasn't "kept up their end of the bargain". He never used BK at all, so why would he be bound by BK's license? McVoy may not like what Tridge did, but let's face it, reverse engineering for compatibility is perfectly acceptable - even the much-maligned DMCA explicitely allows it, because lawmakers realized that it's important.
So, McVoy can rant and rave all he wants - the fact remains that HE is the one who did not keep up his end of the "bargain". The bargain was that kernel developers get to use BK for free, and BitMover gets free advertising - now that the company has established itself, it doesn't need that sort of advertising anymore, so they're just looking for a convenient excuse to pull the plug on the "free" BK.
The fact that McVoy doesn't admit that is probably to be expected, but still, it doesn't change the fact that he spreads just as much FUD and lies as Darl McBride, Laura DiDio, Maureen O'Gara, Steve Balmer and so on.
I, for one, sure hope he gets what he deserves.
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
Complete message here
This has been a public service announcement from the Geek Nation Communication Explanation Foundation.
include $sig;
1;
Might as well mention that it looks like Darcs is getting the git religion also.
A software package named git - also known as the 'Gnu Interactive Tools' - allready exists.
http://www.gnu.org/software/git/git.html
Think at it as a combination on Midnight Commander with emacs keybindings & config. Me and a lot of people use this usefull shell.
So please change the name of this source versioning package.
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